Of Girls and Monsters
by jellyjay
Summary: It's been years since those days, but she still doesn't know if she's a girl that can become a titan, or a titan disguised as a girl. It matters though, because he treats her as a human being, and it feels like forever since someone saw her as anything other than a weapon.


**Of Girls and Monsters**

_The first time Annie uses her titan shifting ability, she's eight years old._

_There's blood, and havoc, and pain, and the entire ordeal is a horrific blur that she can't control until she wakes up hours later, confused and disoriented and with her heart pounding too heavily in her chest. It feels like she's just awoken from a terrifyingly realistic nightmare that she can't recall, and at first, she thinks that's all it is. _

_Until she realizes that the bed she's lying in isn't hers and that this house isn't theirs. There's something in her mouth that tastes like iron and dimly, she remembers the feel of something crunching between her teeth. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots her father sitting in the furthest corner of the room, staring blankly at his hands and murmuring something incoherent to the floor._

"_Where am I?" she wonders, sitting up awkwardly._

_Her father doesn't reply._

"_Father?" she asks again. _

_He stops, breath catching in his throat. "Annie," he says at last, but he doesn't turn his head to look at her._

_She hesitates. "...What happened?" _

_There's a pause, and he leans back against the wall, eyes wide and looking everywhere but her. "You turned into a monster," he manages. "You are a monster."_

_Annie frowns at him. "I don't understand. Where's mom?"_

_He doesn't answer._

x

"Oi, Annie."

Someone drops into the seat beside her and she doesn't need to turn to know who it is. She lets out an irritated huff. It's no surprise that he doesn't take the hint. It's Eren, after all. "What do you want?"

He shrugs and helps himself to a drink. "Where do you disappear to sometimes?"

She turns her head slightly but only to glare at him from the corner of her eye. "Is it any of your business?"

"Uh – no but - "

"Then keep out of it," she snaps, turning back to her drink and downing it without another word.

He clucks his tongue. "What's your issue today?"

Annie heaves another irritated sigh and fights down the urge to clock him in the face and be done with it already. "Evidently, you are. Go away."

"Psh." Eren smirks at her and folds his arms across his chest. "You're a shit liar."

"And you're a pain in my ass." She glares at him. "_Go. Away."_

He frowns at her, and for a second Annie thinks he's going to say something else. He doesn't, and she has to actually make an effort to keep the surprise from showing on her features. Instead, he makes a face and gets to his feet. "Come and spar later. You'll feel better."

He's gone before she can object.

x

_Annie and her father move as far away from people as they can after the incident. There's a cabin on the edge of the wood closest to Wall Maria that he uses sometimes when he goes on day-long hunts. He makes it their home. "We can never let them see what you are, Annie," he'd explained. "You're a monster. They will never accept you."_

_It's been a year since that day._

_Her father looks at her like she's a stranger, which saddens her a lot, because that's far from how it used to be. Once, she was her father's little girl: the daughter he'd taught how to fight and had been so proud of when he saw her flip one of the bullies at school on his back. She was his pride and joy not so long ago, but he looks at her now as if she's not even human. _

_She still has no recollection of exactly what happened that day, but she understands now that her mother is gone because of what she is. Perhaps her father is right._

_She hates herself for things she can't even remember doing. _

_How can anyone do any different?_

x

Some days she wonders if Eren is damaged in certain parts of the head. She's relatively sure that he knows he doesn't stand a chance, no matter how hard he trains. She has simply been doing these techniques for longer, and she has far more experience in them than he ever will.

He doesn't seem to care. He approaches her day after day – _"Annie, spar with me, I think I'm getting it." – _and he takes the beating, never once asking her to go easy on him or let up even a little. Perhaps he's an idiot. Or maybe a glutton for punishment. She doesn't know.

They head into the training field alone that afternoon. It's Sunday. Everyone else spends their afternoon off enjoying the showers or resting aching muscles. Eren chooses to use it to get the living daylights beaten out of him.

He's walking ahead of her with his hands in his pockets when he asks, "Seriously, what's your issue today?"

Annie raises an eyebrow at him as he takes his place a few feet from her. Her arms are raised and she's ready, but he, evidently, is not. "I thought you wanted to spar."

"I do," he says. "But you're distracted."

Her eyes narrow. "Excuse me?" she deadpans.

Eren shrugs like he doesn't notice (although knowing Eren, this is probably true). "I dunno, you seem kind of out of it. I don't want you going easy on me because you're distract – "

He's on his back with the air knocked from his lungs before he even realizes it, and Annie hides a smirk as she rests a foot on his chest. "I don't have to be focused to beat the shit out of you, Jaeger."

Eren wheezes. "Get off," he gasps, squirming. "Annie, I can't breathe – "

She snorts and digs her heel into his chest for a moment before allowing him up. "Do I still look distracted or do you need another demonstration to show that I'm not?"

Eren's too busy trying to breathe to give an answer.

x

_There's one mirror in the cabin, and Annie looks at her reflection sometimes while her father's out gathering firewood. _

_She has her mother's bright blonde hair and her father's crystal blue eyes. She thinks her nose is a little big and her mouth a little small, but she has two ears, and two arms, and two legs, and ten fingers and ten toes. _

_She looks human. She feels human._

_So while she can't remember what it was that she did, and while she is ashamed of it, whatever it was, she still doesn't understand why her father is so insistent on calling her a monster from beyond the wall. _

"_How can I be one of them?" she asks one day as she watches him bring an armful of wood into the cabin. It's a good question, she thinks. Titans are unintelligent, lumbering giants who kill people by eating them or crushing them under clumsy, gargantuan feet. She, on the other hand, is tiny. Her body is delicate and frail, and despite that, she's still clever and co-ordinated enough to take on men twice her size in a fight. She doesn't even really like the taste of meat. _

_But her father shakes her head. "I don't know," he answers quietly without looking at her. "But what happened that day still happened. You became a monster." He huffs. "Maybe you still are."_

x

Their spars usually end in Eren being on the ground and unable to move. Perhaps one day, she will be the one in that position, but today is not that day. Today, Eren is on his back with her knee on his chest and the prop knife they use in formal training inches from his neck. He struggles a little in an attempt to throw her off him, but she digs her knee into his sternum and leans a little more of her weight on the arms he's using to keep the knife from his throat.

Eren gasps a little and, with a huff, surrenders to her for probably the hundredth time. "You win," he groans. "Get off."

Annie gives him an amused "hmph" and eases her weight off his body.

"How do you do that?" Eren asks her, sitting up gingerly. "You're tiny."

She snorts. "Maybe you're just clumsy. How else could someone as fragile as me make it look so easy?"

He snorts too. "Bullshit. I've seen you take on Bertholdt and Reiner _at the same time_ and you had them keeled over in a second."

"It helps that they're idiots," she says, folding her arms across her chest.

"They're also _twice_ _your_ _size_. Cut the crap, Annie." Eren shifts a little and makes an attempt at getting to his feet, but his leg buckles under him and he falls to the ground again with an unceremonious thump. "Fuck," he grumbles, lying back against the grass. "I think I busted my knee."

Annie rolls her eyes at him and nudges his side with her foot. "Get up. I'm not helping you back to the barracks."

"You try walking on a busted knee!" he snaps, probably a little harsher than he means to.

"I'll leave you here," she threatens.

"No, you won't."

Annie raises a sceptical eyebrow at him. "What makes you so sure of that?"

Eren snorts. "Please. You're harsh as fuck, but you're a decent human being. You wouldn't leave an injured friend out here to die, would you?"

She narrows her eyes at him. "Don't tempt me."

x

_One day, someone comes knocking at their cabin. _

_No one has ever bothered to come all the way out here before, but she's curious, and she opens the door for a lanky bespectacled man with long black hair and more hair on his arms than she's ever seen. He reminds her of an animal she saw in a book one of the girls in town had hidden away. An ape, she thinks. He reminds her of an ape._

"_Hello," he greets her with smile. "Are you Annie?"_

_She hesitates, wondering how it's at all possible for a man she's never met to know who she is, but her father calls out to her from the further recesses of the cabin before she can answer. _

"_What's going on?" he asks her._

_She hesitates again. "There's someone at the door," she starts. "He – he knows who I am."_

_Her father frowns. "Let me speak to him."_

"_I – "_

"_Let me speak to him," he says again, sterner this time. "Go and skin the rabbits. I'll take care of this."_

_Reluctantly, she nods, and she excuses herself from the man at the door. She's halfway down the hall when she hears him say something important. Something serious. Something she's wondered since the day her mother died._

"I know what your daughter is."

x

"Are you okay?"

The question comes out of nowhere, and Annie shoots Eren a glare through narrowed crystal eyes. "Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she says stiffly.

He shrugs. It's a little difficult – his knee cap is dislocated, and out of pity, Annie has allowed him to sling an arm over her shoulders and help him limp to the infirmary. It's awkward because she's so small, but they manage.

"I've had worse." He grins. "Hell, you've given me worse. But you still seem kind of out of it."

"Why is it your business if I am?" she deadpans.

Eren shrugs again. "It's not. But, you know, we're friends."

She snorts. "You're not my friend."

To her surprise, Eren lets out a bark of a laugh. "You're a shit liar," he tells her for the second time that day. "You're helping me back to the infirmary, aren't you?"

"I can drop you now," she snaps, turning her head to glare at him properly.

"You won't." He's still grinning because he knows he's right, and Annie knows that he knows it. It's infuriating, and she actually seriously considers it – but he's still right, and the fact that she doesn't infuriates her more. "See," he continues, "you can bullshit all you like, but everyone here knows you're a nice person. You're not fooling anyone, Annie."

She scowls and bumps her knee against his bad one.

"Ow fucking ow! What the hell was that for?"

"You're an ass," she grumbles.

x

"_You're going away with him," her father tells her that night._

_Annie is halfway out the back door to retrieve firewood when he says this, and she blinks and turns to face him. His face is buried in his hands__. __ Even muffled, she can hear the exhaustion and strain in his voice. _

"_I don't understand," she says. "With who?"_

_Her father sighs. "Herr Meyer," he says. "The man from before."_

"_I – " She swallows. "Why? Why are you sending me away? I thought – "_

"_He can help you, Annie." He looks up to face her at last – properly face her – the way he hasn't done since the day things all went wrong. He looks older than she has ever seen him – she doesn't remember the lines beneath her father's eyes or the wrinkles at the corners of his lips. He looks nothing like the man she remembers and everything like him at the same time. "He knows what you are."_

_Annie takes a step backwards. "He knows I'm a monster, you mean."_

"_No!" He gets up and sort of scrambles towards her. "Annie..." His voice is gentle now, and he rests his hands on her shoulders and drops to his knees in front of her. "He'll take you away and you'll learn to control your abilities so that they can't control you." He heaves a sigh and presses his forehead to her shoulder. "I was wrong. And it's too late to ask you to forgive me for how I've treated you – my own daughter." His grip tightens momentarily. "Listen to one thing, though. Just one thing."_

" _Father, I – "_

_He shakes his head. "The world will resent you and curse you for what you are," he murmurs. "Treat it as your enemy but remember that I will always be on your side."_

_Annie swallows the lump in her throat. "Please don't send me away," she says in a voice barely louder than a whisper. _

"_I don't _want_ to send you away," he answers softly. "Monster or not, you are still my little girl. You know that, don't you? But he can help you. Just promise me you'll come back. Promise me that, Annie."_

"_...I - "_

"_Please, Annie." He looks up at her, and Annie realizes that her father is begging. She's never seen him look so desperate, but to be honest, she's not entirely sure if he's begging her to come back or if he's begging her to leave._

"_I promise," she mutters at last. Her voice sounds empty and hollow, and she can't help but feel that her promise is too._

x

The medic takes one look at Eren's knee and shoots her a glare because he's so accustomed to Eren's injuries now that he knows the majority of them are inflicted by her. "This is the second time this month," he comments. There's no missing the undertone of irritation in his voice.

Annie glares back. "He keeps asking for it," she says simply.

"Don't take that tone with me, Leonhart," he snaps. "I'll be having a word with Shadis about this." He turns his glare to Eren, who gives him an awkward and sort of apologetic grin from the cot. "Don't move," he tells him sharply. "You too, Leonhart. Keep an eye on him until I come back."

They wait until he leaves before Annie lets out an irritated huff and slumps against the wall. For someone with a dislocated knee, Eren is smirking pretty widely.

"You know, you sneak off all the time and no one ever catches you. It's nice to see you being reprimanded for a change."

She scowls at him. "I can make that knee hurt a hell of a lot more, Eren, don't test me."

He makes a sound like a braying horse and grins at her. "Tell me what your issue is and I'll stop pushing your buttons."

"You're still on about that?" She's glaring at him now because she realizes he's right. To everyone else, she is cool and calm and resolute. To Eren, she is easy to irritate because he knows how to push all the right buttons to piss her off. It's stupid to take it personally because this is Eren, and it's likely that he just knows how to piss everyone off – but this is personal now. He is asking about her personal life in exchange for him to stop being such an ass.

"Well?" he prompts.

Annie snarls. "Why does it matter?" She's seething, mostly because Eren has been doing this _all fucking day_. There's never been any doubt in anyone's mind that it's in his nature to be a dick, so, really, she never should have expected any better.

"It matters because you're my friend," he explains, propping himself up on his elbows. "Maybe not best friends, but I have enough respect for you to still like you after you kick the shit out of me day in and day out. Humour me. Just this once, as an apology for dislocating my knee."

She rolls her eyes at him. "If you really think I'm going to apologise for your idiocy, you've got another thing coming."

"_Humour me._"

Annie sighs. "I've been... reminiscent. Of bad times."

"Ah."

It's all Eren has to say for her to know that he understands. He'd been through hell once too. A different kind of hell, perhaps: he doesn't know how it feels to be referred to as a monster by your own father; to be given away to learn how to be one, and she hopes and prays he will never have to face her as the titan she's been trained to become. It's been years since those days, but she still doesn't know if she's a girl that can become a titan, or a titan disguised as a girl. It matters though, because he treats her as a human being, and it feels like forever since someone saw her as anything other than a weapon.

"Eren," she says quietly.

"Hm?"

"Thanks."

The snort he gives her is smug, but sympathetic. "You're welcome." It's all he says before the medic comes back and shoos her out of the infirmary.

**Some notes:**

**1. I really, really love Annie, okay, but I started off watching the anime and I was so upset that she was made out to be a villain with maybe 20 seconds of back story. I love me a good female villain, but come on guys, 20 seconds? Really? Need moooore.**

**2. There's a fan theory that the Ape-like Titan is Eren's dad and I am tooootally getting behind it because yes. The issue is that Eren's dad is relatively well known from what I've seen from the anime and read of the manga. Soo yep, until this is confirmed, we can pretend he's using a fake name.**

**3. Shout out to ****bayalexison**** for being an awesome beta.**


End file.
